Transitions fill the space inside your pole dancing.

Pole dancing without solid transitions is about as appealing as a lover who can’t kiss.

We’ve all seen it: dancers who are tremendous athletes and incredible acrobats, yet their dancing skills got left behind. In watching them, we feel like their pole dance keeps starting and stopping – first, a beautiful sequence of aerial moves, then nothing. Next, the dancer repositions herself around the pole, only to begin another amazing series of moves, followed by … nothing.

It’s exhausting to watch because there’s no flow. Instead of being caught up in the movement, we, instead, get bored.

And there is nothing so awful as dancing to a bored audience.

What can you do to improve your own transitions?

The number one way to improve your transitions is to slow down. Not just by choosing slower music, but by stopping the rush inside your brain, which drives you to think in terms of steps.

Truly, how many times do you find yourself in the middle of a dance thinking about what pole move you could do next?

Let me tell you, that is the kiss of death to good pole dancing. You need to slow down your thoughts so that they recede behind your feelings. Once you manage this, your feelings will guide you and your transitions will begin to happen naturally.

One side effect is that you may do fewer “real” pole moves in your pole dancing – but don’t let that alarm you. Dancers usually cram too many moves into a short piece of music, trying to show their whole range in two minutes.

That’s not dancing.

Dancing means you start with your emotional response to the music – and only a select portion of your pole dance vocabulary is going to mesh with that.

That’s a good thing.

You want fewer moves and more feeling.

Look at Broadway. Look at Baryshnikov. You’ll find short dance numbers done with awe-inspiring precision and heart-stopping passion – yet the dancers display only a small fraction of all the moves they know.

The impact of a pole dancer comes from the emotion she conveys, even if she’s the only one around to see it. When transitions are done smoothly and with grace, that impact is magnified – and the dancer suddenly really feels like a dancer.

Review your own pole dancing honestly – are your transitions really all they could be? If not, make time to work on them. You may even want to start here.